Shooting and cynicism

I know that this was a horrible event and that it will take a few days for the whole story to come out, so I’m not going to make light. However, the cynic in me is going to ask two questions:

1) Who are they going to try and blame for this one? A random heavy metal band or a computer game?

2) How quickly before the parents involved try to sue someone?

As I’ve said on other pages, and other blogs, I’ve liked pretty much every American I’ve met. But their society is a festering heap of shit. They refuse to recognise that their gun culture is to blame for so many incidents like this, and their kneejerk reaction to the loss of a loved one is to wonder how much money they can make from it, and how to shift the responsibility to a major corporation than admit they were fucking awful parents or that – simply – “shit happens, some people are born mentalists”.

Bush can sit there and issue press statements about being “shocked and saddened” but he’s the twunt who kept semi-automatic weapons on the streets by refusing to carry forward an edict left behind by the Clinton administration so he’s partly to blame.

I could rant on more, but I’d likely be repeating myself from other blog posts. Want me to shut up? Then make sure this shit doesn’t happen again. 33 innocents dead is surely enough of a price to pay for someone to start thinking about changing things?

Aaah, the old idea that Heavy Metal is to blame for all the worlds ills. Have I ever felt the urge to go on a killing spree? No. Has anyone in my group of friends? Hmm…that’ll be a no too. It’ll be just like Columbine and blaming Marilyn Manson again…

Andy – yeah, I mean what did the Americans ever do to those little yellow slitty-eyed freaks to deserve this? Aside from invading several of their countries, mass abuse with horrendous weaponry against civilian populations and systematic racial abuse. Think I may have answered my own question. But you’re right – everyone of vagualy Asian descent will now be a potential psychopath. Great.

Weenie – if there’s not already a queue of them forming promising people they can get more money for the greedy… sorry… *grieving* families, I’ll be astounded. Parasites.

Talia – Wasn’t Columbine where they blamed Doom or Grand Theft Auto? Or am I just getting all these arsehole cases mixed up again? I still remember the one in the UK about ten years ago where they found a Sepultura album in the guy’s CD collection. And thanks again for the licorice (as spelt on the packet over here) aid!

I think you might be right – it was early and my brain wasn’t working – I just remember the interview with MM in ‘Bowling for Colombine’ and how he was just so astounded that people thought his music could affect people that way.

Nightwish (my favourite band for the record) wrote a song called ‘The Kinslayer’ about the Colombine murders. It’s one of my favourite songs by them – it’s got my favourite line from any song ever – ‘Lust For Fame, A Deadly Game’. It sums up so much about American culture in my mind.

It annoys me when people spell liquorice that way…but I’m just a pedant for British spellings, lol.

The difference in the comments on those two pages is startling: the first are credulous “OMG WTF BBQ why did nobody jail him for writing this?” and the second are actually written with some thought: “Violent imagery in fiction does not necessarily involve violent intent on the part of the author” and “parallels [with] “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.”” – was Shakespeare a psycho?

Virginia had just become a “gun-free campus”. Which meant none of the law-abiding students were permitted firearms, and they could not protect themselves. Compare and contrst to a campus which was not gun-srestricted, where students went, got guns, and stopped the shooter before the bodycount hit 30. In fact only three died, three were injured: http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=3117

London has tighter gun control than New York. London has more gun deaths per capita than NY. And ALL the guns are in the hands of the people we don’t want to have them.

We the public are not even allowed pepper spray, tasers or batons, let alone something that will stop someone dead.

I am scared. I am terrified every time I run out to help the shopkeeper on the corner defend his shop from gangs. Because they don’t give a fuck about laws and they have guns: someone was shot dead at the end of my road only the other week. If you think gun laws are protecting you, you are naÃ¯ve, they didn’t protect that dead guy and they aren’t protecting me.

Why didn’t that kid go nuts months earlier? Because other people were allowed guns on campus then, he’d have been dead by the end of his first clip.

What else do we have on the news today? Oh, Mayor of Nagasaki shot dead… in the most gun-unfriendly country in the world. Gun laws don’t protect you, they protect the bad guys from getting shot back at.

Andy – I’m not in Sydney… not been there for ages! I’m currently in Darwin Airport awaiting a redeye flight to Singapore. And, yes – I remember the trench coats. Yup, it was all Ted “Theodore” Logan’s fault.

Dewi – blimey, you read too much. But you also have a very good point. But would you personally feel safer carrying a gun if you knew every other person did? My concern is that if they’re that common, people take them for granted and rather than a fistfight breaking out when someone spills a pint, it’s flying bullets. As for the mayor of Nagasaki – would it have helped had he been carrying a weapon?

Trouble with the gun control debate is that there are two ideal situations, neither of which will happen. Both sides tend to argue for one or the other, but not realise that in fact NEITHER is gonna happen in our lifetime.

The first one is that psychos and suicides should no longer have access to guns, so would be unable to indulge the urge to “take others with them” (well, other than by explosives or vehicles and other deadly machines). This requires either that psychos are identifiable (not gonna happen) or that there are no guns. But that’s a childish dream: we’ll never get rid of guns, not while there are wars, and while people know how to make their own. Instructions are all over the net: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=home+gunsmithing

The other, equally stupid idea, is where everyone is required to carry a gun at all times, and be trained in their responsible use, so psychos can take out at most one or two before they’re taken down by passers-by. Bullshit, never gonna happen. People will always be irresponsible no matter how much training they have, and the good guys will always choose to go unarmed because weapons are nasty and antisocial. Even where the good guys are armed, the killers will just kill people in ways that prevent shooting back – drive-bys, sniper rifles, mass poisoning, suicide bombs, flying planes into buildings (whoo, your blog has probably just rung every bell on the FBI list).

So in truth there’s no way to avoid the current, middle-of-the-road situation: government employees have the most weapons, but massacre-capable weaponry is available to interested citizens fairly easily, and they can hurt a whole lot more people with a bomb made of pitta-bread dough and bleach than a gun (wikipedia lists 750 casualties for the four bombs on 7/7: 52 dead, 22 critical, 80 overnight hospital, 250 brief hospital, 350 treated on scene).

Sure, you move the balance a little either way. You can make it a bit harder for the bad guys to get weapons (but still laughably easy: even in the UK, I could get you a modded Brocock or even an AK47, both for not much more than you’d pay where they are legal: and you can get bleach and pitta dough anywhere). Or you can make it a bit easier for normal people to carry weapons.

But the “statistics” on which position is better are confusing and contradictory and generally indistinguishable from “damn lies”.

I’d feel safer if I could carry a gun – this is why I *did* carry a blank firer, a 12″ knife, a bloody big Maglight, and an attack alarm in Bradford.

Would I feel safer if everyone *else* could, even when I wasn’t armed? Well, yes… because in London I currently have to assume that the bad guys have guns, and if there’s a fight against chavs, they’ll have guns and nobody on my side will. I’ll just be dead. So if citizens could arm themselves, the only change would be that maybe some passer-by would fire a shot for me, and maybe the

Looks like Dewi got cut off in his prime. Ever thought that maybe this is a topic close to Dewi’s heart?

I remember the blank-firer and letting off a few rounds on the big field near Rios! Thing is, if a policeman saw you carrying it, you’d have snipers trained on you faster than you can say “death to the infidels”…

bit late on this one man. My view is that………deep breath…….IF YOU WALK OUT OF THE HOUSE WITH A GUN ON YOUR PERSON THEN YOUR ARE GOING OUT WITH THE INTENTION OF TAKING A LIFE. rant over. if the Americans wanted to ban this shite they could ban guns quite easily, but the republicans and democrats are up to the hip in money from the gun lobby – therefore no gun ban. hey ho.

Did you hear what the genius’ at the NRA came out with?
“the problem was that it was a no-guns campus, if all the students were able to have guns then the guy wouldn’t have shot 33 people” or something like that.
utter, utter genius.